Gender pay gap report

Our people are at the heart of our business, and we want to create an environment where the most talented people in our industry want to work, regardless of gender, ethnicity, race or background.

We are aware of the scale of gender imbalance that exists at senior levels in our company, directly causing a significant gender pay gap. Over the last 12 months, we have been working hard to tackle this imbalance at grassroots by taking initiatives to encourage more women into the business at graduate intake level. As a result, this year we achieved gender balance at entry level, meaning that we will start to see more and more women coming through the ranks of our business to eventually become our future leaders.

Alongside this, we have been working to ensure that we are providing an environment where talented people regardless of background or gender can thrive throughout their whole careers. We have introduced agile working in all our offices, and are introducing contemporary working practices to support the changing needs of our people and clients, as well as tailored leadership and development programmes which directly address the specific needs of different groups.

The business case for building a diverse workforce is intuitive. People who are truly representative of our communities and our clients will be able to provide advice attuned to their requirements. At GVA we are striving to create an environment where the most talented and creative people want to do their best work, regardless of background, race, ethnicity or gender.

Unfortunately, our gender diversity problem is sector-wide. Real estate has traditionally been a male dominated industry, not typically one driven by women. Despite the efforts underway to address this, no business or company can fix the problem singlehandedly. We need the whole sector to collaborate and actively use forums like the Changing Face of Property and Real Estate Balance amongst others, to address the issue with a united front. I am pushing this approach at every opportunity.

We welcome the transparency of reporting on our gender pay gap, which needs to be used as an important wake-up call to step up our game, and tackle head-on the widespread gender imbalance in real estate.